Genuine Gold

by Ann Aptaker

  Mona’s gaudy laugh breaks my tender moment. “You always did like the professionals, Cantor. You remember? When you were a rowdy young dandy, just before you left Coney Island for good, you used to drop by the notch joints. Loreale owned them by then.”

  It’s not a tidbit I particularly want brought up, but I’m not especially embarrassed by it either. It actually seems to make Lilah friendly toward me again, if the smile she gives me is any indication. There’s surprise in her eyes, but enjoyment in her smile. The two sentiments merge into a gentle laugh rich with wisdom.

  “Mona,” I say, “you sure can pick ’em.”

  She shrugs that off, says, “I just don’t want you to forget where you come from. You left in such a hurry today—yeah, word got around that you just up and left—it was like you washed your hands of us. Scrubbed us outta your fancy new life, dumped the sand outta your shoes. Not even an arrivederci. Maybe you shoulda stayed away, Cantor. You bring trouble.”

  “I’m here now.”

  “So you’re here now, so what? So why? Suddenly you’re back? Who sent you? Maybe it was that bandito Loreale. I hear you’re close with him.”

  “You heard wrong, Mona.”

  “Maybe. But you two got history. You think I don’t know you worked for him before? Hey, I was around then, like you said. Remember?” She says it through a sneer that hints she has beans to spill and she’s going to spill them. “Those visits to his flesh joints weren’t just because you had hot pants, Cantor. You weren’t only a customer. Word has it you picked up cash for Loreale.”

  Lilah’s smile disappears. She slides her hands away.

  “Like I said, Mona, you sure can pick ’em. But you don’t always know what you’re picking.” Lighting a smoke gives me a minute to soothe the hurt under the scab Mona’s just ripped off.

  Lilah whispers, “Got another smoke?”

  I shake out a cigarette. She puts it between her lips, I light it for her.

  Through a slow exhale that sends smoke around her face like one of Salome’s veils, she says, “I think it’s time for you to come clean about your connection to Loreale, Cantor.”

  “I’m not on his payroll, if that’s what you mean.”

  Mona says, “But you were.”

  “I was young and trying to stay alive, Mona, that’s all. And like you said, it’s no good talking about the past. We have enough to worry about in the here and now.” I close down Mona’s inquisition by taking Lilah’s hand again and moving the conversation back where I want it. “Look, Lilah, getting tangled up in Sig’s business is the last thing I want to do. That’s why I left this afternoon. After I got what I came for, all I wanted was to get Sig’s hired Coney Island eyes off me, get back to my own racket. But life isn’t that simple. Stuff pulls at you. Stuff was pulling at me.”

  Some women stroke your cheek when they think you’re talking sweet about them. Some give you a charmingly innocent smile or the come-hither variety. But Lilah Schwartz Day doesn’t stroke my cheek or give me a smile. She starts to cry, a silent sob carried on a long, slow tear that rolls down her cheek and settles in a corner of her mouth.

  She looks almost as defenseless as she did when she saw the knife in her brother’s back, only now there’s no fear mixed up in it, no horror, just a weary hope that someone actually gives a damn about her.

  I say, “I came back because I figured you might be in danger, and I couldn’t put it out of mind. With the cops snooping around, and Loreale’s people looking into Mickey’s business—yeah, it might’ve been one of his people poking around in your things, looking for Mickey’s books—you may have a target on your back. Whoever killed Mickey may figure you’ll take over his operation, and they’d want you out of the way, too.”

  Mona jumps on that. “So maybe it was Loreale who had Mickey killed?”

  “Sig had no reason to kill him. Mickey was a fly Sig could swat out of the way when the time came. Mickey’s murder makes things messy for Sig’s business plans now, and Sig doesn’t like things messy.”

  Mona says, “So you’re not close to Mr. Loreale, huh? How come you know so much about what he thinks? You a mind reader?”

  With a laugh more annoyed than jolly, I say, “I leave the mind reading to you, Mona. I spoke with Sig this morning, that’s all.”

  “You spoke to Loreale? I thought you don’t work for him.”

  “Just because I don’t work for him doesn’t mean I don’t talk to him, even when I don’t want to. And believe me, I usually don’t want to. Listen, both of you, you’re just going to have to trust me. Mona, I have to assume that you have Lilah’s best interest at heart. You have to trust that I do, too.”

  She reaches for the deck of tarot cards. “We’ll see.”

  I take the deck from her hands. “Forget about the cards. I don’t need them to tell me what to do. And what I have to do now is get Lilah to safety until I figure out Mickey’s murder. C’mon, Lilah, get your coat. I don’t know how much longer you’ll be safe here. Esposito knows I was here last night, so sooner or later he’ll be around again, and then whammo, your cover’s blown.”

  “I don’t know, Cantor. I’m not sure I should leave.”

  Standing up from the coffee table, I tower over Lilah, still seated on the couch. Reaching for her hand, I say, “I’m not giving you a choice.”

  She stands up without resistance, her black high-necked sweater catching light, her plaid pleated skirt swaying, her green eyes narrowing. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Out of Coney Island.”

  *

  Lilah pulls her coat more tightly around her as we walk out Mona’s door and down the front stoop. She looks along the street, turning her head left and then right, watchful.

  “Don’t be scared,” I say. “We’ll be gone in a minute. My car’s just down the block. We’ll be back at my place in an hour.” I take her arm, lead her toward my car.

  But someone takes my arm from behind, grips it hard. A thick voice says, “We’ll take things from here.”

  The voice comes from a jowly face with hooded eyes and a red nose under a dark fedora. Bulby Nose. The thug who grabbed the satchel with the pyxis last night outside Miranda van Zell’s place.

  The we he referred to is his murderous pal, Pointy Chin, who’s got Lilah’s arm in his grip.

  “Well, well,” I say, “if it isn’t my new friends from last night. What gives, boys? Your boss is dead, so you operating on your own? Nah, you don’t have the brains. So who you taking orders from now?”

  Lilah says, quietly, like she’s trying not to wake the neighbors, “Maybe you shouldn’t push them, Cantor.”

  “I’m not letting them take you.”

  Pointy Chin says, “Get in the car, Miss Day,” and tugs her to the dark, bad-mood Dodge sedan parked at the curb.

  I pull Lilah back with my free arm. “Don’t get in that car.”

  Bulby Nose yanks my arm loose from her. “You’re not givin’ the orders here.”

  “Yeah? Well, who is? Loreale? Is it Loreale? Did he get to you? Make a deal with you? Are you his boys now?”

  Bulby Nose snorts. “Shut up, Gold. Miss Day, get in the car.”

  “She’s not going anywhere,” I say, surprising everyone by pulling my gun. “Let her go,” I tell Pointy Chin. “And you, Bulby Nose, let go of me.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “You heard me. And if you don’t want to hear the muzzle of this gun blasting in your ear, you’ll let Miss Day and me go.” I don’t see Lilah, and I don’t see Pointy Chin, but I feel a gun muzzle suddenly rammed against my back.

  Pointy must’ve moved around back of me while I got gun cute with Bulby. “Drop it, Gold,” he says. “Drop the gun.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  His laugh is as sharp as his chin, a brittle cackle like cracking plaster. “Well, then someone’s gonna die.”

  He probably means me. But he might mean Lilah. I won’t be happy with either result.

  B
ut I know he’s a killer. He’s the thug who knifed Frank the Doorman at Miranda van Zell’s.

  Pointy Chin’s in back of me. Bulby Nose is in front of me. Which is why the elbow of my free arm lunges backward, smashing Pointy’s gun out of my back, while my gun hand slams forward, right across Bulby’s face.

  I make a grab for Lilah, try to make a run for it to my car, but Bulby Nose recovers fast and yanks me away from her. I can’t see Lilah now, don’t know if Pointy’s got her. I’m too busy trying to get Bulby Nose off me, to keep him from wrenching my gun out of my hand. He’s a big guy, strong as an ox, and I swear he’s trying to pull off my whole hand from my wrist, just to get my gun.

  We tug back and forth, pain shooting deep into my hand, my wrist, and up my arm. Bulby’s eyes glare under his fedora, his teeth bared in a rage that he can’t wrest my gun from me. But I don’t dare let go, even after the gun goes off, scaring the crap out of everybody. The bullet hits the sidewalk. Lilah screams.

  Pointy Chin yells, “Let’s go!”

  I spin around in time to see him get behind the wheel of the Dodge, Lilah beside him. Bulby gets into the backseat, slams the door shut as Pointy Chin drives the car away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  House lights that flicked on briefly during the tumult go off now. None of the neighbors ever came outside, nobody lent a hand, didn’t even look through their windows. Same old story: there’s nothing like a little fear to kill off neighborliness.

  I go back to Mona’s, knock on her door. But even she doesn’t answer. I guess fear can kill even the most tender friendships. It certainly seems to have killed Mona’s friendship for Lilah, and whatever nostalgic friendship she may have had for me.

  I’m scared now, too, scared for Lilah. I have to find where they’ve taken her. I have to get her out alive.

  *

  I walk over to a hard-drinking saloon I used to frequent on Mermaid Avenue, hoping the place is still there. I need the walk to calm me, shake off my fear, try to figure my way through the spook-house ride I’ve been on since I came back to Coney Island. It’s been tough enough to avoid the ghosts in the darkness, and now the crazy car I’m riding risks smashups with murder and kidnapping and sex, the sex I had with Lilah for pleasure, and the sex she has for sale. I wonder if sex is Lilah’s way of navigating through her own spook-house life, the way crime is mine. I suppose we all choose our survival gear, our weapons to fight our way into the American Dream: sex, guns, money, a wife and two kids, a husband and a two-car garage.

  By the time I reach the saloon—still open, to my relief—I need a drink and a phone more than I needed the walk.

  Inside, the saloon hasn’t changed much since the last time I was in here over fifteen years ago, except the bar stools—once green—have been re-covered in red vinyl, and the song playing on the jukebox is a Johnnie Ray tearjerker instead of a Benny Goodman swing. Otherwise, the air still smells of beer and cheap whiskey, the dark walnut bar’s still scratched, and the sawdust on the floor still reeks of salt air, vomit, and beer. The four guys at the bar, two of them drinking alone, pay no attention to any of it.

  The song finishes up on the jukebox, but nobody gets up to put in a dime and play another tune. The fellas are too busy watching me. The saloon’s quiet as a tomb as stares follow me to the bar.

  I’ve seen these kinds of stares plenty. They could mean trouble, or just the cold shoulder. Since no one’s moving off his bar stool, I figure it’s the latter, which suits me fine. I’m not looking for chitchat. I just want a drink, a phone, and a little peace and quiet to figure things out.

  I ask for a double scotch, no ice, from the bartender, a bag of bones whose tired eyes are held open only by their wariness of everything. “I used to drop by this place,” I say, “when Morty—”

  “Morty’s dead, heart attack,” the barkeep says, his face like stone. “I bought the place from his widow.” He looks me over as if he’s getting ready to smash me one to the jaw. But all he says is, “This ain’t your kinda bar.”

  I don’t like being told I don’t belong. And though I learned a long time ago I’m not going to change anyone’s mind, nothing is going to change my mind, either. If I can tell cops not to boss me around, I can tell it to this backwater barkeep, too. “Look, bud, I’m here for a drink, not trouble, though if you want it, I can certainly provide it. So just pour me the scotch, and we can both end the night without a black eye.”

  But he doesn’t pour me a drink. He cocks his head, and the next thing I know, two of the guys at the other end of the bar are suddenly on either side of me. One of them is thick and brawny, all bulk and beer belly under a plaid shirt. The other’s wiry, all sinew under his unzipped brown lumber jacket and red shirt.

  The other two guys at the bar just keep their eyes to themselves, and keep drinking.

  The wiry guy says, “You deaf? The man said this ain’t your kinda place.”

  The bulky guy says, “So you’re leavin’.”

  I say, “Even if I buy you boys a drink?” Sometimes a little sugar works, too.

  The wiry one says, “I don’t drink with pree-verts. So get outta here.”

  I say, “No.”

  And that’s when the wiry guy gets stupid: he pushes me, slams his finger in my gut, and rams his other hand hard against my shoulder. He shoves so hard, my breath clogs in my throat then bursts out, my hat falls off and tumbles to the floor. He’s shoved so hard, he’s unleashed the outlaw who takes no guff from the unrighteous.

  The wiry guy never saw my jab coming, and it will be a few miserable days until his right eye sees anything at all.

  But there’s a sudden slam into my lower back from the bulky guy’s fist into my kidney, doubling me over. I don’t like the pain, but being doubled over is slick cover for my hand slipping under my coat, and when I finally straighten up, my gun’s in my outstretched hand. It’s tough for me to speak, but I manage. “I’ll take that drink now, barkeep. And if you’ve got a phone back there, put it up on the bar.”

  The barkeep’s face isn’t stony anymore. It’s pale and pasty as he pours me a rotgut scotch and brings up the bar phone. My two attackers back off, the wiry one with his hand to his eye.

  Keeping my gun in my right hand, I pick up the scotch with my left, down it in one pull. It restores my gut, settles my nerves. “Another,” I say to the barkeep, who pours another scotch without complaint but with a sullen look. “Now go away,” I say, and put a buck on the bar. He moves off. “You, too,” I tell the two guys, and they don’t argue. No one argues with a gun.

  Alone now at my end of the bar, I dial a number. I check my watch while the phone’s ringing. Nearly eleven thirty. Maybe he’s still up.

  A gruff voice comes on the line. “’Lo?”

  “Let me talk to Sig.”

  “He’s just gone to bed. Call back tomorra.”

  “Get him up,” I say. “Tell him it’s Cantor Gold. Tell him there’s another problem in Coney Island.”

  After a pause while Sig’s thug figures which choice is worth his life—to wake the boss or not wake the boss—he bets on the former. “Hang on a minute.”

  I sip my scotch and light a smoke while I wait for Sig to come on the line. The booze and nicotine keep me steady, blunt the pain in my kidney.

  A minute or so later, I hear, “What is so important, Cantor, that you disturb my sleep?” spoken in Sig’s slow way that feels likes snakes slithering up my spine.

  I say, “Did you send any of your flunkies to poke around in Mickey Day’s stuff or his sister’s stuff, looking for Mickey’s business records?”

  “That is no business of yours, Cantor.”

  “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but okay, I’ll let that go for now. But here’s something I will not let go.”

  “I warn you, Cantor, it better be important.”

  “Oh yeah, you bet it is. Did you take over Mickey’s outfit and tell two of his thugs to grab Lilah Schwartz Day?”

  “That is not important,
Cantor.”

  “Think again, Sig. It’s plenty important. Because I think Lilah’s the key to Mickey’s murder. Not because of anything she might know, but because of who she is. If she disappears, or winds up dead, all the players, all the new real estate money boys vying to divvy up Coney Island, all the crooked cops, and all the Coney operators, will be at each others throats, and not even you will be able to control it, Sig.”

  Sig Loreale didn’t rise to be New York’s—and the whole country’s—number one crime lord by being careless. He weighs everything, examines everything, just like I know he’s doing now through his silence. It lasts only a few moments but feels like eternity, until he finally says, “No, I did not take Miss Day. When did she go missing?”

  “About fifteen minutes ago. Two thugs snatched her right in front of me.”

  “I see.” That’s all he says before he lapses into a rough breathing silence that doesn’t end the conversation, just signals me to be quiet while he thinks. He finally says, “You are certainly involved in a mess, Cantor. You would be wise to clean it up. Do you understand?”

  You bet I understand.

  “And I must say,” he goes on, “it seems you keep losing things in Coney Island. First your client’s goods—”

  “I found the goods, Sig. I made my money.”

  “Good for you. But now you’ve lost Miss Day. You seem to keep losing women, Cantor. Good night.”

  He hangs up.

  He’s just wounded me worse than the two barflies who attacked me, worse than any cop who’s beat me up, and all he had to do was raise the specter of Sophie.

  *

  Eddie’s loading a gumball machine when I walk into the arcade. It’s well past midnight, but the place is busy with plenty of insomniac locals feeding the machines, making the games clang and chime and buzz, keeping the players better company than their empty beds. When Eddie finally sees me, he’s even less happy about it than when he saw me earlier. Right now, he looks like he’s about to be sick. “What’ll it take for you to leave me alone?”